Six months ago I had a knee operation.
The procedure was to repair something called a ‘meniscus tear’. And if you say it right, that sentence kind-of rhymes. Kind of. ‘Cause that’s tear as in rhymes with ‘bear’ and bloody well hurts; not tear as in saline liquid from an eye.
Recovery was gradual and for the first four months post-op I walked with a noticeable limp. In an effort to keep my spirits up, I imagined myself as one of my favorite movie characters, Snake Pliskin (Kurt Russell) from the movie ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK.
There’s a scene in that movie where our hero Snake gets shot in the leg with a crossbow arrow. For the rest of the movie, he gets around with a limp. A genuine, A-grade, blue-ribbon ‘nothing’s going to stop me’ – mind over matter – hero’s limp.
Here’s a taste of that classical hero’s’ limp...
It got me thinking, what other memorable movie characters have walked with an ‘injured gait’.
Jack Nicholson’s unhinged (mild understatement there) Jack Torrence character in THE SHINING developed his limp after tumbling down a flight of stairs after taking a whack from his baseball bat-wielding (defending) wife Wendy.
Then we had the endo-skeleton version of THE TERMINATOR (1984) who endured quite a bit of punishment to earn his mechanical limp…
They’re my top three.
An honorable mention should also go to Mel Gibson’s limp in MAD MAX 2.
He gets beaten pretty badly at a certain point in the film and the limp is probably the least of his hurts. But it is undeniably another classic hero’s rendition of the stylized injured walk in all it’s never-say-die glory.
Don’t have a clip for this one, so the next best thing is this scene, which ironically features another character (played by great Australian actor Mike Preston) who walks towards Max with, you guessed it, his very own… limp!
And before we limp away from this subject altogether, a final nod to a supporting character from the BLADE vampire trilogy that starred Wesley Snipes in the late 90’s/early noughties.
Whistler (coolly played by Kris Kristofferson) was Blade’s ageing mentor and ally in battle. This character walked with a limp, which in no way hindered his ability to machine-gun and shotgun away to his heart’s content blood sucking hipster vampires.
It’s brief but by God it’s there. The Whistler limp..
What’s that? You want a bonus limp? Ok, if you insist. This one’s from the ending to Clint Eastwood’s 1977 movie THE GAUNTLET. The blood on our hero’s leg when he steps off the bus looks more like he just lost a fight with a bottle of Heinz ketchup, but the limp? It’s top-tier, inspired and genuinely Oscar worthy. See for yourself…
The certified knee-slapper reproduced below was penned by humorist Greg Nix and appeared in the March 2nd edition of his highly entertaining newsletter CHORTLE.
This week, the Hatchette Book Group (one of the ‘big five’ global publishing companies) announced it had cancelled the U.S release of a horror novel titled SHY GIRL – originally self-published by Californian author Mia Ballard in February 2025 – as well as withdrawing the book from sale in the UK (effectively ‘limping away’ ) because of suspected use of A.I generated content.
You can read about the controversy HERE.
